Early Aboriginal-European interaction may surprise

A group of Aboriginal men and children in the early 1950's. File photo / NZ Herald.

When the First Fleet appeared in Sydney Cove in 1788, coastal-dwelling Aborigines were terrified. They thought the ships were giant birds, or monsters, or floating islands, and they fancied that the figures climbing the masts were either devils or possums.

Within a few years, though, and despite a smallpox epidemic that killed half the indigenous population, Aborigines in the Sydney area had adapted to the new reality. Having never ventured outside Sydney Heads before, they accompanied the English on globe-trotting voyages, witnessing the founding of new settlements and helping to explore new frontiers.

This little-known aspect of early Australian colonial history has been pieced together for an exhibition at the New South Wales State Library that provides a fresh perspective on the impact of European occupation.

"It shows how Aborigines participated in colonial society and made a life for themselves," says Dr Keith Vincent Smith, the curator. "It also shows their incredible resilience."

Vincent Smith has uncovered the identities and stories of 80 men and women who travelled the world with English settlers and naval captains, starting with Bundle, a 10-year-old orphan who sailed to Norfolk Island with Captain William Hill, of the New South Wales Corps, in 1791.

Among those who followed in his footsteps - many of them joining whaling and sealing expeditions - was Tom Chaseland, who married the sister of a Maori chief and became the South Island's most famous harpooner. The highly energetic Chaseland, son of an English settler and an Aboriginal woman, went on more than 20 voyages, more than any other Aboriginal sailor.

Already skilled canoeists who were equally at home in saltwater and on land, coastal Aborigines demonstrated a natural seafaring talent. They were also valued for their knowledge and expertise as guides, go-betweens, fishermen, pilots and trackers. At sea, they worked, ate, slept, smoked and drank with the English crew members - and they learned about each other's language and customs. "There was definitely cross-cultural stuff going on," says Vincent Smith.

While the Europeans' tall, square-rigged ships initially caused panic - one naval officer wrote that "the natives, alarmed, ran along the beach in seeming great terror ... they took their canoes out of the water upon their backs and ran off with them into the country, together with their fishing tackle and children" - Aborigines soon grew accustomed to them.

They gave the name "mari nawi", meaning large canoe, to the biggest vessel in the First Fleet, the 20-gun HMS Sirius, and called the smallest, the eight-gun brig HMS Supply, "narang nawi" (small canoe). For some years, old and new co-existed: an 1804 watercolour attributed to the former convict John Eyre shows Sydney Cove teeming with both ships and canoes. (The centrepiece of the exhibition - called Mari Nawi: Aboriginal Odysseys 1790-1850 - is a full-size replica of an Aboriginal canoe, constructed, as was traditional, from the stringybark tree.)

Members of Sydney's coastal clans helped create colonial Australia's first, lucrative export trade - in sealskins, seal oil, whale oil and whalebone. With their fine eyesight, physical strength and spear-throwing skills, they were well-suited to whaling.

Tom Chaseland - who often sailed in New Zealand waters and ended up settling at Waikouaiti, in what is now East Otago - was said to have eyesight so keen that he once spotted a whale that could not be seen through a ship's telescope. Chaseland, who became a bay whaler at Waikouaiti, survived two shipwrecks, one off the Chatham Islands, the other off Stewart Island. He married Puna, sister of the prominent Ngai Tahu chief Te Matenga Taiaroa. He also discovered, on a Waikouaiti beach, the fossilised leg bones of a moa, the extinct flightless bird, which are now in London's Natural History Museum.

Aborigines also accompanied the English on epic journeys, visiting places as far-flung as South America, India, Canada, the South Pacific, California and England. The adventurers included a husband and wife team, Yeranabie and Worogan, who spent 11 weeks at sea, and Bungaree, who joined Matthew Flinders' expedition aboard HMS Investigator, becoming the first Australian-born person to circumnavigate the continent, as well as sailing to Timor and Mauritius.

Prized for their ability to find water, catch fish, trap kangaroos and track runaway convicts, Aborigines also helped to explore new frontiers and establish new colonial settlements.

They were present at the founding of the Hunter River (near present-day Newcastle), Derwent River (Hobart) and Port Dalrymple (Launceston) settlements. Mainlanders were recruited to track and capture Tasmanian Aborigines.

Some acted as go-betweens, smoothing the way in encounters between Europeans and indigenous people. Bungaree, it is said, would remove his clothes and show the latter his initiation scars.

In recognition of their part in Australia's early maritime exploits, some Aborigines were given fishing boats, land grants and metal breastplates. But they were also unwilling sailors, with resistance leaders such as Bulldog and Musquito transported to the Norfolk Island penal colony in 1805 and later to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

The exhibition, which features old books, ships' musters, logs and journals, as well as paintings and lithographs, lists the 80 Aboriginal voyagers who sailed on a total of 123 expeditions in the first 60 years of European settlement, together with dates, vessel names and destinations.

Vincent Smith says: "This is an unwritten chapter in the cross-cultural shared history of New South Wales, and it shows that Aborigines were accepted, at least in that part of society. It also shows that they had the will and skill to survive.

"They had had their land taken away; they had suffered from the smallpox epidemic. What they did was make a life out of what had been a bleak picture of defeat."